


Common Ground

by Luck_O_Tucker



Series: The Bonds Between Us [5]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luck_O_Tucker/pseuds/Luck_O_Tucker
Summary: Despite their differing beliefs and attitudes, here on the hot desert sands of Vulcan, could they nevertheless find some element of common ground?
Series: The Bonds Between Us [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642147
Kudos: 10





	Common Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, okay, so I've said it before... old story! Revisited and... yes, re-edited, hopefully with the result of greater clarity, then set in its spot in the chronological order of the series.

Common Ground

10 October, 2154  
Vulcan’s Forge

T’Les was dead.  
T’Pau knew it even before she saw how her head lolled against the shoulder of T’Pol, the Starfleet officer who was her daughter.  
Dead.  
And gone.  
Though there had been no telepathic link between herself and T’Les, their months of study together, their long, thought provoking discussions and linked meditations had sensitized her to the subtle thrum of the other woman’s consciousness. Hours ago, she had experienced something she could best describe as a thrust of mental recoil as T’Les’s katra departed and that awareness had snapped.  
Gone.  
Now she stood with T’Pol, gazing at the fourth patrol of the day as it disappeared beyond the borders of the Forge in the direction of the capital. Nearby, as they kept their watch, the human, Archer, slept amid the fever dreams of one taxed by what was, for him, an alien desert heat. And by the honor and burden of carrying the living essence of Surak within his mind.  
“There is a strong security grid.” T’Pol’s voice sounded at the edge of her awareness. “It’s unlikely we’ll get past it.”  
“We’ll find a way,” said T’Pau. The reply was more a reflex than a logical response. It provided no plan, nor information for devising one. Her gaze traveled from the place where the craft hunting them had vanished in the sun’s brightness, to the rugged landscape. She knew the Forge better than either of her companions. Even having Surak’s katra to lead him toward the city, Archer, with a human body not bred to this environment, lacked her instinctive understanding of how best to navigate the harsh Vulcan desert. So, it would be wise to steady her breathing and focus her intention solely on determining their safest path.  
To do so, she must first recognize, then separate herself from the thoughts and emotions that had distracted her these last hours. The grief over the death of her mentor, Syrran, only days ago in a desert storm, and her friend, T’Les, back at the sanctuary, could be set aside for the moment. It would be there, patient and waiting, when she had time and strength to give it its proper respect. They both would know, she was certain, the logic of prioritizing.  
The matter of the Kir’shara was more difficult to dismiss.  
For almost two millennia, the complete writings of Surak had been kept here, hidden safe and sacred, in the Forge, where the Father of Vulcan Logic had come searching a means to end the violence on his world. In recent years, that old violence had begun to recur. She could not ascertain precisely when it had begun, but her mentor, Syrran had said that, in his earliest youth, he could recall a Vulcan society that was far more tolerant of diverse customs and ideas than anything she had ever known.  
T’Pau did not find it ironic that she and her fellow Syrrannites had been condemned as originators of the violence. To the High Command, it would be entirely logical. The group’s well-known pacifist precepts, put down in Surak’s own hand, no longer served the needs of those who governed Vulcan. While those in power still used his honored name in ceremonies for the power it held in the hearts of her people, the words of his incomplete manuscripts had been twisted for some unclear purposes of their own. Anyone whose views diverged from theirs as was a threat that must be eliminated.  
Only hours ago, they had located and destroyed the Syrranite sanctuary and kill those who had not managed to escape before the bombing began, including T’Les.  
But they had not found the Kir’shara.  
Archer, who had received the katra of the dying Syrran had, with its guidance, located the sacred relic. It cradled now, protected close beside him where he slept.  
While T’Pau had no great affinity or trust for humans with their emotion-driven impulsiveness, she could agree with his insistence they get the kir’shara to the city with minimal delay. She would accept his marginal leadership in order to get it to scholars to  
Study, then freely disperse, its teachings. Surak’s living essence must also be removed from its human host and secured in the Hall of Ancient Wisdom.  
Above all, both must be kept from the hands of the High Command.  
Which brought her attention back to locating the path she had spoken of to T’Pol.  
The other woman had made no reply to her earlier comment, only continued to stand motionless beside her, filling the air between them with skeptical silence.  
After a moment of centered breathing, T’Pau found her resolve strengthening as she affirmed aloud what she believed. “Surak will help us.”  
T’Pol’s silence deepened.  
T’Pau turned to study the stranger who was the daughter of her friend. “You don’t believe in the katra.” She heard the note of disappointment in her tone and focused a moment’s attention on suppressing it, along with a fresh ache of sorrow.  
Gone.  
The last person T’Les had touched with her living hands was a non-believer.  
There was no logic in regretting that she hadn’t been the one to hold T’Les in her arms as the katra left her body. What was done, was done.  
But it was a waste. T’Les had been an apt pupil, an earnest seeker and a dedicated Syrrannite disciple. Now all her wisdom, both acquired and innate, was lost. T’Pau had sensed nothing of her familiar thrumming presence as she stood close beside T’Pol. Not so much as a fading echo.  
Nor had she sensed anything from the Starfleet officer herself beyond that resistant wall of skepticism.  
T’Les’s katra would scatter, dissipate like rare Vulcan rain on the winds above The Forge. Perhaps, in some indefinable way, its richness could nourish her world. But T’Les’s individual essence would never take its place on Seleya in the ancient Halls of Wisdom. Despite her efforts of the past hours, T’Pau found the loss to be a bitter ache.  
Yet somehow she would find a way to grieve with T’Pol. Though little else, they could share that much. If, that was, they ever reached some area of common ground.  
Still, T’Pol’s disapproval of all the Syrrannites stood for had been obvious since she and Archer appeared in the Forge.  
It was now quite understandable why, during their long and thoughtful discussions, T’Les had more than once confided her concerns about her daughter.  
T’Pol had spent years away from home, serving on an Earth vessel and seemed to have more affinity for her alien shipmates than the people of her home-world.  
Archer, T’Pau knew, was not the first Earth human T’Pol had brought with her to Vulcan. The other, whom T’Les referred to as “Tucker”, had appeared at her home with no prior announcement from T’Pol. He seemed to have redeemed himself for this breech of etiquette, even won some degree of her approval by helping to prepare the morning meal as custom demanded and then by repairing several of T’Les’s kitchen appliances.  
While it would have been an intrusion to ask her friend for specific details, T’Les had, in part, begun her studies in the Forge as a possible means to help her daughter regain some inner balance. T’Pol’s years of association with humans had intensified her emotional reactions or weakened her control over them.  
Even without T’Les’s concerned observations, it was not difficult to recognized the truth of them. Though even the slightest ripple of T’Pol’s internal essence was locked away beyond T’Pau’s perception, her attitudes were evident in the defiance of her stance and the tone of her voice.  
“It is irrelevant what I believe,” T’Pol dismissed her words. “The captain could be permanently injured if we don’t get him to a doctor soon.”  
While T’Pau could appreciate the concern for Archer, the narrowness of T’Pol’s understanding of the Vulcan mind, the Vulcan soul, was all but inexcusable. “He doesn’t need a physician.” Said T’Pau. “He needs a priest. One experienced with katras.”  
“It is irrational that we are following someone in his state of mind.” T’Pol’s chin lifted and her voice grew hoarse with challenge. “What if he dies before we can get help?”  
As T’Pau’s eyebrows rose, the rigidity in T’Pol’s posture lessened. For the first time there as something other than disapproval in her stance. When she spoke, her voice was level, her words measured, though weariness weighed on each one. “I apologize. My mother’s death has affected me more than I realized.”  
Logic could not diminish the strange finality of that word, death, paired with the name or the thought of her friend. T’Les, dead? Yes, it was so, but…  
Dead… And gone.  
“It was a great loss.” T’Les’s death, T’Pau realized, as that bitter ache asserted itself again, had affected her as well. “We disagreed frequently, but I valued her council.”  
The shadow of sorrow flickered in the Starfleet officer’s gaze. Perhaps this was the common ground that, despite their differences, would allow them to begin healing the loneliness of their mutual grief.  
“I could,” T’Pau offered. “Allow you to experience what she shared with me.”  
“You melded with her.” It was a statement, not a question. When T’Pol continued, her brittle tone did not quite cover a deep weariness and, could it be, resignation? “I cannot meld.”  
That was something T’Les had never mentioned. Perhaps she had seen no reason to do so. Though any willing Vulcan could participate in a meld, it seemed in recent years that many could not activate another’s psi points to begin the process.  
Was that heredity, or some unconsciously conditioned constraints resulting from the High Command’s strictures and society’s deepening prejudices against those who melded? T’Pau was unsure, though she had her own suspicions. Hadn’t her studies of Surak’s teachings implied the melding of minds was the legacy of all Vulcans?  
Right now, such conjecture was irrelevant. “I would initiate it,” she offered.  
“That’s not what I mean.” T’Pol drew a careful breath and continued with what seemed great difficulty. “I was forced… to participate in a meld, several years ago. I was infected… with a neural disease…”  
T’Pau knew what she was about to say and spared her the effort. “Pa’nar syndrome.”  
Though she did not move, T’Pol’s every muscle seemed to tighten in withdrawal.  
Shame! T’Pau had seen it before. It was a useless, but powerful emotion. One hard to overcome since it had to do with a person’s perceptions, not of what one had done, but of what one was! A stigma imposed for acting in accordance with one’s own nature!  
And a needless burden on her friend’s only child. T’Les had not known of the pa’nar or she would have shared that knowledge in order to find help for her. Privacy would have been no issue, since stigma against melding was nonexistent among the Syrrannites.  
How many years had T’Pol carried her shame in silence?  
Now it was obvious why she had not accepted reassignment back here to Vulcan. She would have been summarily dismissed from her position, a public disgrace both to herself and to her family as soon as the inevitable changes in her condition became apparent.  
T’Pau’s discontent with the High Command and what it was doing to Vulcan society was an old, old ache deep within her. The anger she had almost mastered through joining the Syrrannites and staying on the Forge the last two years in self-imposed exile, once more grew hot green in her veins.  
When the words of the kir’shara were made known, such gross injustices could be exposed, then corrected!  
Important as that was, it held no bearing on the here and now.  
The slow and practiced intake of meditative breath, then the steady, tidal release, left her able to concentrate on the woman before her. Nothing but calm directness sounded in her tone. “Do you still suffer from it?”  
It was an illogical question when the answer was all too obvious. Aside from T’Pol’s skeptical attitude, the resistant wall around her was too complete to have been merely a deliberate block. That lack of thrumming essence T’Pau had sensed, even in such close proximity, could have served as a diagnostic clue. A priest would have recognized it for what it was within moments.  
But she was not a priest, so she would not reproach herself. Instead she would listen for T’Pol’s response, then use that to gage the where the border lay between T’Pol’s innate privacy shielding and the telepathy freezing effects of the pan’ar syndrome, then plan her manner of offering help accordingly.  
Perhaps, she decided with fleeting gratification, she was finally learning something out here on the Forge after all. One of the lessons which had given her the most trouble. It was the beginning of patience.  
The response, when it came, was carefully neutral. “There’s no cure.”  
T’Pau’s old familiar anger stirred at the words. Still, “patience!” she told herself. She would breathe. Slow, deep. And she would seek the help of Surak’s words to deal with it. All her studies made them easy to recall. Control meant recognizing the difference between anger and temper, the difference between temper and purpose.  
But still, what needless shame T’Pol had carried for… how many years? What needless anticipation of a future full of worsening symptoms!  
T’Pol’s waiting amber gaze questioned T’Pau’s moment of silence. Though the Starfleet officer stood motionless, T’Pau did not find it difficult to discern the suggestion of shame in the tightness of her shoulders and the defiance of it in the way she stood with her head high and her feet planted squarely in the sand.  
Anger refined itself in empathy.  
“Another lie perpetrated by the High Command,” T’Pau said at last, and heard the gentleness in her own voice. Was it any wonder T’Pol had allied herself with the impulsive, emotion-riddled humans, when she considered herself to be akin to outcast by her own people? It would have seemed only logical to remain with those who would not stigmatize her, or force her to abandon making useful contributions even while the progression of the pa’nar began to be debilitating.  
Still, it must have been difficult, learning to live surrounded by aliens and their customs. Listening to the constant offerings of thanks, apologies or explanations for understandable actions, putting up with their intrusive, often careless curiosity, witnessing the consumption of animal flesh, enduring the close contact with outburst of vehement emotions and…  
The smells.  
IDIC, T’Pau reminded herself, battling down a wave of repugnance at that last thought before she drew another balancing breath. Infinite diversity in infinite combination. A tenet of belief that was easier to hold up as an ideal than to live by day after day. One that, T’Pau reluctantly admitted to herself, that despite her lack of formal training in the words of Surak, T’Pol had mastered more successfully than she herself had.  
At least the shame, the isolation could be lifted, the injustice of it corrected, for this single, highly courageous person.  
“Pa’nar,” T’Pau explained. “Has been known since Surak’s time. It’s caused by melders who have been improperly trained. One with great experience can correct the neurological imbalance.”  
“Is there something you can do?” T’Pol’s gaze was steady on hers, curiosity and hope kept in courteous and disciplined check.  
Perhaps she had been less influenced by the humans than T’Pau had believed.  
Raising her hand, T’Pau allowed her slender fingers to trace the side of T’Pol’s face. She found the high, curving cheekbone, the ridge at the brow, then the subtle valley in front of the ear, then the paths to the psi points that would bring the two of them together.  
There was a contraction of tiny muscles at temple and jaw, barely perceptible beneath her seeking touch, an instinctive mental retreat expressed only by the slightest of physical reaction before, with a determined effort, T’Pol’s features relaxed beneath her hand.  
So, T’Pol was also more disciplined in the meditative techniques of her own people than T’Pau had first suspected. This would make things easier.  
“My mind to your mind.”  
Harder than bone, the wall was there beneath her touch.  
Patience…  
T’Pau closed her eyes. Gentled her exploration. Slowed it. Shifted the position of her thumb. A little more… Almost there…  
Contact!  
Behind her closed lids, a face appeared. Was it her own?  
Yes. But only for an instant.  
She was there, at the border of T’Pol’s mind, touching the smallest crack in the wall of wounded memory.  
“My thoughts to your thoughts,” she said, her fingertips adjusting, aligning the psi points until a faint vibration shivered through them. “Our minds are moving closer.”  
She did not move. Did not seek to examine the sensation with strengthening pressure. Only allowed the vibration to flow. To grow. Fuller, stronger. To become a shudder, then a kind of silent rumble. The resistant wall of scarred awareness was deconstructing as the current flowed through opening channels and the mind beyond them moved steadily toward its point of proper balance. The rumbling grew, deepened, until a moment later, it became an earthquake. In the instant after it passed, the wall crumbled.  
“Our minds are one.”  
They were not truly one person. She’d experienced this merging enough times to know which sensations were hers and which T’Pol’s, though there was not the usual sharp divide between personalities.  
A face was staring back at her.  
No, she realized. It stared at T’Pol.  
It belonged to a Vulcan male. His eyes were alight with fervor. His touch on T’Pol’s temple had been heavier than hers. More determined fingertips had pressed these same points, their careless thrusts beginning the cascading imbalance that was pa’nar. T’Pau could read them like the footprints of a sehlat across the desert. And like a wild sehlat’s, their search was driven by… curiosity, yes… but more than that, by a relentless hunger. He wanted T’Pol’s experiences and her emotions.  
No. Stop! T’Pol’s protest was ignored.  
He would free them, would have them. Every vibrant sound and color of them!  
Stop…!  
He would overcome her every reservation!  
No!  
He would enlighten her to the wild joys to be found in feeling, feeling, feeling! Then they could share and share and share… Again and again and…  
His face was so close, so close. And there was a name. Tolaris. He was aboard Enterprise with a group of renegade Vulcans, the … The V’tosh ka’tur!  
T’Pau knew them by that name, though it was not one the group had given itself. It meant “Vulcans Without Logic”. In the early days of her seeking, she’d attended one of their gatherings, drawn by a shared idea that the High Command was twisting the meanings of Surak’s words in order to meet its own uses. Like her, they believed it was robbing the Vulcan people of its heritage. But soon after the meeting began it became clear they wished to reclaim that heritage by experimenting with, rather than disciplining, their emotions. She had not attended a second gathering. Though she believed their search was earnest, she found their ways… disquieting.  
The ways of this Tolaris were far more than disquieting. Someday, if it lay within her power, T’Pau knew, he would be brought home to Vulcan. For justice. Or treatment.  
His face vanished, banished to the past. This was not the moment to dwell on him.  
“The wound he caused has been opened,” she said and heard T’Pol’s words join them in perfect unison. The words were spoken more within the space of their connected minds than aloud, though their soft murmuring left a slight movement of breath on the still desert air. “The scar that held the infection in has been lifted. We have cleansed it with awareness so that now our healing will begin.”  
The last of the wall was gone. The pa’nar’s imbalance had been corrected.  
Already, faint but steady, T’Pau felt the thrum of T’Pol’s presence. Over the weeks and moths to come, she would regain her innate abilities, both those numbed by illness or pressed into constraint by the strictures of the High Command. The readjustment might be difficult, but she would regain her powers of telepathy, even her ability to meld…  
Yes, to meld… T’Pol’s response was tentative, but determined, as images began to flow. There was no wish to intrude, not on either side, but now their joined experiences shone vivid, their exchange devoid of any shame or regret. On desert sands, or through the starfield, on the surface their paths looked so different, but in fact, they had traveled on such common ground.  
They could see themselves traveling across the Forge on a winding path more than two years old, with nothing more than desire and intuition to guide them. There was no place left for them in the city, ruled by the High Council’s corruption and betrayals. There must be something more than the grief for what should have been, beyond this constant, driving anger! Perhaps it would burn itself out in the desert as they headed toward hope and the unknown.  
A hooded Vulcan figure beckoned to them from the edge of the rocks, a shadow within shadows. There was nothing left but to risk announcing their purpose here to him. “I’m seeking the Syrrannites.” They told him. “There must be some logic, some way of being truly Vulcan. I cannot seem to find it. I want to learn…”  
The loneliness remained, but the figure looking at them changed. Became human. The face gazing at them belonged to Tucker… No. Not just “Tucker”, but Trip! Already, a year ago he had been Trip.  
He stood, casual and out of uniform near the door to their quarters on Enterprise. His arms were folded across his chest as he gazed at them, his voice a slow rise and fall that suggested the alien mystery of tidal waves. He’d interrupted their attempt at meditation. The latest attempt, after days and days trying to find the old sense of peace, of sureness that had been theirs before pa’nar, or the addictive urgency of Trellium D…  
When would he leave so they could continue their search? Why did his words have to be as gentle as the lightest touch?  
“Truth is T’Pol… I’ve been worried about you…”  
How long had they fought Trip’s gentleness? The… loving concern?  
A year? Was it that long that they’d held out, before allowing Syrran’s hand to touch their temple, and replace spoken words with those sent directly, his mind to theirs?  
“Breathe in, T’Pau. Steady and deep. You have learned much. Remember that anger is only pain and fear carried far, yet left unacknowledged. View it, recognize its cause and trust that you can let it go with your breath…”  
Pain… Carried so far, yet unacknowledged until only months ago. But this was not their own. Eyes met theirs, alien-ocean blue, brimming over with salt-water streams of grief. It was so palpable it did not need telepathy to be recognized. To know the deep ache of it and understand that they now knew how it could be gathered close, shared and released within the strength of their warm, waiting arms. Trusting that, despite all that was different between them, all that was yet unknown, together they could get through any loss. Listening in silence as Tucker’s… as Trip’s words poured out, emptying the sharpest sorrow with his human tears. “She was my sister, T’Pol… my baby sister…”  
Any loss.  
“She was my friend…”  
“She was my mother…”  
Together they rested within the tired peace that followed that release, as the ache of grief- (was it the fading echo of Trip’s, or was it their own, more recent sorrow?) -began to ease and the vision changed.  
The small, glinting lights before them ceased to be reflections from Trip’s tears. They were the flames of the fire in the sanctuary’s main room, mirrored in T’Les’s eyes. She was sitting across from them at the evening meeting. There was a shared moment of gladness as the last ache of grief gave way at the look of serenity on her intelligent, beloved face.  
…together they could get through any loss…  
She was so close, so real in the moment, with one eyebrow rising as she exchanged glances with them as they all listened to Syrran’s strong, resonant voice and heard the measured undertones of Surak’s knowing words. “There are travelers making their way across the Forge to us. Tonight they rest high on a hillside, beyond the reach of High Command surveillance crafts and sehlat claws. I must go to meet them. I believe they may hold the destiny of Vulcan in their hands.”  
He had turned and made his way into the night, the darkness and the oncoming storm.  
With the quiet rustling of fabric, T’Les rose, her garments flowing in a graceful sweep around her as she moved with long, confident strides to pick up an ancient golden tapir. “In Syrran’s absence,” she said, lighting one lamp then another mounted around the walls. “I will lead the meditations tonight.”  
Without conscious thought, their breathing began to slow.  
“After his first sojourn in the Forge, Surak wrote,” T’Les began. “That the beginning of peace is…”  
Their visions blurred, gave up brightness, then faded… faded… faded as T’Pau allowed T’Les’s voice to recite the wisdom of Surak to them. To the steady, restful rhythm of the words, she began to ease herself back from the meld.  
“Our minds are one.” T’Pau’s murmuring was only the barest suggestion of words, far in the background of the ongoing flow of T’Les’s confident narration. After a centering breath, she continued, her voice and thoughts becoming less their and more her own. “Our minds are sharing those things we each shall keep to enrich us in the days to come, even as we begin to move beyond our grief… Away…”  
Her voice growing firmer, she gathered up the memories of her friend: snatches of conversation and work within the quiet peace of the sanctuary. She did not stop to examine them, but lightly bundled together the images that had touched on T’Les.  
“…away from each other’s thoughts, each other’s minds…”  
They would be waiting for her and for T’Pol to discover and to unwrap, each in her own way and in her own time.  
There was comfort in that. As there was in the flow of T’Les’s voice, the sense of her presence, as she led an unbroken circle of Syrrannites into meditation for the last time.  
It did not fade as the last of the meld dissolved.  
“Our Vulcan hearts are one,” said T’Pau. “Our minds are two.”  
Her hand, so heavy now, dropped away from T’Pol’s cheek, and her eyes opened.  
T’Pol was looking at her. She did not move, not for several seconds, not to even so much as to blink. But in her motionlessness, there was no sense of hardness or rigidity. Only, perhaps, a hint of perplexity. After several contemplative seconds, she bowed her head in a traditional gesture of acknowledgement and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said.  
T’Les had always said the offering of thanks for obviously understandable actions was illogical: a human, not a Vulcan custom. Still, in these circumstances, T’Pau was certain her friend would appreciate its significance.  
She watched as, after a moment, T’Pol turned an made her way into the shadows to check on Archer.  
“No. This time, the sharing of thanks was not illogical”.  
T’Pau blinked. Those words could almost have come from T’Les. It was the same way the voice of her friend’s thought had resounded when they had been joined in meld or meditation. But the vision of the sanctuary did not return. In any event, those words had not been a part of T’Les’s recitation.  
“Your actions were obviously understandable.” The thought continued. “They were also generous. And difficult for both of you. And they…”  
Eyes widening, T’Pau dared to whisper the name. “T’Les?”  
“…are very much appreciated.”  
She caught her breath as the significance of the response became a growing awareness. The words were not a memory, but a reaction to this moment! T’Les was…  
Not gone!  
It had been unfelt, unrecognized, but it had rested safe within T’Pol’s illness-numbed mind, waiting until healing could enable her daughter to release it to find a way to get home to the Halls of Ancient Wisdom. Until her friend and fellow Syrrannite could carry it there for her…  
T’Les’s katra!  
Her friend was dead. She would be grieved, but still there was also reason to rejoice because she was… Not gone!  
In the weeks and months to come, as T’Pol’s mind finished its recovery, she might realize what had rested there, and learn of the peace T’Les was finding in the next part of her journey. Would she also discover that, under T’Les’s gentle prodding, Tucker had confided his love for T’Pol? A love that was deep enough to be left unspoken when it would only complicate her life? Would it surprise her as much as the errant memory had surprised T’Pau, to find that, human or not, T’Les had come to respect and approve of Tucker? That, had T’Pol not already been prepared to wed Koss, T’Les would have considered him an acceptable mate for her only child?  
T’Pau was not certain what she thought about that. Humans might have good intentions, like Archer’s determination to protect the kir’shara, or Tucker keeping his silence out of love for T’Pol, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable with the idea of spending much time around them. They were a strange, emotional and impulsive people. Not to mention… that smell.  
IDIC, she chided herself as, behind her, she heard the crunching of footsteps across desert sand. T’Pol was approaching with Archer. After she ascertained the safest path by which the three of them could reach the city, she must put her mind to that ideal of IDIC.  
After all, in the kir’shara, hadn’t Surak considered it to be of great importance?


End file.
